Cathy Malchiodi

Dr. Cathy Malchiodi, PhD, LPAT, LPCC, ATR-BC, REAT, is a Board Certified and Licensed Professional Art Therapist, Licensed Professional Mental Health Counselor, Registered Expressive Arts Therapist, and Research Psychologist. Cathy is an Honorary Life Member of the AATA and served on their Board of Directors for eight years as Secretary and Treasurer. She is a past member of the American Counseling Association’s Governing Council as well as past President of the Association for Humanistic Counseling and currently serves on the boards of several international organizations. Cathy has written and/or edited 19 books on art therapy and expressive arts including Handbook of Art Therapy (2nd Ed), Creative Interventions with Traumatized Children (2nd Ed.), Art Therapy Sourcebook, and the forthcoming Trauma-Informed Expressive Arts Therapy®and recently published, When Children “Clam-Up;” Facilitating Therapeutic Communication. She also serves as a Series Editor for Guilford’s Creative Arts and Play Therapy publications and on the Editorial Boards of the Arts in Psychotherapy and several other international journals. Cathy regularly writes about art therapy, expressive arts therapy and related topics for Psychology Today’s Arts and Health, a popular blog read by over 4 million readers.

A guest lecturer around the world, Cathy has given more than 400 invited presentations and workshops throughout the US and internationally; she regularly returns to Australia for multi-city lecture tours and workshops. In 2017, Cathy was invited by the Singapore Ministry of Health to present a series of lectures and workshops on Medical Art Therapy to help establish the profession of art therapy in that country. Her 30 years of experience in trauma intervention inspired her to create the Trauma-Informed Practices and Expressive Arts Therapy Institute, dedicated to expanding awareness and knowledge of the importance of the expressive arts in trauma reparation and recovery. Founded in 2011, the Institute’s growing faculty of credentialed creative arts therapists teaches courses grounded in mind-body, resilience-based and wellness-oriented expressive arts; to date, over 15,000 practitioners have participated in the Institute’s courses and programming. 

Cathy has worked for three decades with survivors of interpersonal violence, disaster, and medical illness. More recently, she has been working with active and returning combat military and their families through the Department of Defense, designing arts-based resiliency programming for children, families and couples and providing individual therapy to veterans with posttraumatic stress and traumatic brain injury. Cathy’s interest in art therapy began as a student at the Museum School of Fine Arts in Boston MA where she studied multicultural arts, painting and conceptual/performance arts. She currently works in mixed-media including altered books, large-scale collages and printmaking. In her spare time, Cathy recently became a recreational pilot because of her lifelong fascination with Amelia Earhart and Chuck Yeager, and well, she likes the idea of being an “aviator.” She is also grateful to have her husband David, feline supervisors Zoolee and Finnegan, family and so many wonderful friends around the planet in her life.